


Father Figure

by JessicaJones



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-26
Updated: 2010-07-25
Packaged: 2017-10-17 10:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessicaJones/pseuds/JessicaJones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's not how you die that's important," he said. "It's how you live."  A glimpse at Duncan's life, from his Joining to his death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. dark

**Author's Note:**

> such huge thanks to decantate for the beta, for listening to me blather about my insecurities, and for being talented and sweet and gosh darn awesome all around.

It was springtime in Val Royeaux, a balmy night with topnotes of freesia and pressed wine, and Duncan was not hungry for the first time in months. The guards were generous with food, at least, and he was grateful. He was seventeen years old, and in the morning he would hang for murder.

Warden-Commander Genevieve came to him with an offer of salvation, but he remembered the Warden that he'd killed, the way his eyes had begged for death, and Duncan thought he'd rather hang. He said no.

She didn't listen. She saved him from the gallows and it didn't seem right to be angry about that, but he was. He wondered if his conscription was a sort of vengeance, but Genevieve was not vengeful. She was not anything absolute, just a rough sketch of a woman, drawn in shades of grey.

The elf with the mouse-brown hair watched him with mournful eyes, her irises so dark that he could not find her pupils. She told him her name was Fiona but didn't let him tell her his. "It will only make it harder if you don't..." The words trailed off. "Tell me after the Joining."

Her voice was sharp as pins as she stammered through the ritual. A tiny slip of a mage, Fiona hid inside a chainmail tunic and gripped her staff as though she might fall if she let go. Duncan imagined what it would be like to kiss her.

Genevieve handed him the chalice and he drank.

In the darkness he felt Fiona's eyes on him, and when he opened his eyes she smiled. "You survived your Joining," she said, but he could feel it burning in his veins and was not sure that he had. He was seventeen years old, and he had been executed.

Fiona was still watching him. She asked him for his name.

"It's Duncan," he said, but his voice didn't sound like his own anymore.


	2. names

The baby in his arms was not a pretty child. His head was too big and his arms were too skinny, but his laugh was the prettiest sound that Duncan had ever heard. He wanted to hold him forever. He was nineteen years old, and he was abandoning this baby.

He wondered again if this was the right thing to do. Fiona did not wonder. She was cool and practical and knew that this was the best thing for the child. She was not wrong. Duncan knew that if this were his child, he would never let him go.

"Dih dih dadda daa daa?" the baby cooed. He was just coming to the age where he would stumble on the names of things.

"That's right," Duncan said, pointing to the throne room. "Dadda's in there."

The baby laughed again, sweet perfection, revealing a single tooth. Alone, it looked more like a horn than an incisor. He stuck his whole hand in his mouth and sucked it.

"Duncan, you can come back in."

It was time, and he stepped back through the stately double doors. The King's eyes widened predictably. "Congratulations, your Majesty," Duncan said. "It's a boy."

Maric and Fiona argued and discussed and charted the child's future, but Duncan's attention was on the baby only. He opened his mouth wide, and the baby copied him. He stuck out his tongue, and the baby did the same.

"Let him think his mother human, and dead," he heard Fiona say. She walked over to Duncan and stroked the baby's soft blond hair, a gesture of farewell. "It will be easier, for him and for you."

Maric made a strangled sound. Fiona did not know her parents. She did not know how strange it was for a mother to give away her son, then drop him on his father and expect him to immediately do the same. Maric stared at her with longing.

"I'll watch him," Duncan said suddenly. Fiona and the King both turned to him as if they had forgotten he could speak. Duncan had not been sure why he had accepted this post in Ferelden, but he knew then, this was why. He offered to protect him, to be discreet, and to report back to the King. He did not offer to love him; he did this without asking.

The relief and gratitude on Maric's face were obvious. "You would do that?"

"Without hesitation."

Fiona crossed the room to Maric and caught him in a kiss.

Duncan turned away, remembering the long road back to Orlais, how he held her hair back from her face when she was sick. He remembered the way she gripped his hand through each contraction, and the nights he carried the baby to her bed when she was too tired to stand. When he looked back, Fiona was gone, and he never saw her again.

Her exit left a hollowness in his chest, and he frowned. It must have been a funny face because the baby laughed again, an inappropriate but intoxicating sound, and Duncan laughed back. He couldn't help himself.

After a moment the King was beside him, staring at the child. "Funny looking kid, isn't he?" He looked bewildered, as if an octopus had fallen from the sky and landed in his lap.

"Takes after his father," Duncan said, and he elbowed Maric in the ribs.

Maric laughed. "Poor little guy," he said, nodding. "Going to be stuck with the Theirin nose, I'm sure."

Duncan watched the King. "People would recognize him if he stayed here."

Maric sighed. "Of course you're right," he said, and wrung his hands. "I suppose it's for the best. Can you imagine the fit Loghain would throw?" He lowered his voice, in his best imitation of his stern friend. "Dishonor on the Theirin name, and your name, and Rowan's name. Maker rest her soul." He switched back to his own voice for that last bit. "I'm sure it would be confusing for Cailan."

"Yes," Duncan agreed. "All those things."

"Does he have a name of his own, actually?" Maric asked. "Fiona didn't say."

"No." Fiona did not name him, had avoided even holding him for fear of growing attached.

"Huh. Any suggestions, then?" At this Maric looked to Duncan, in that open way of his, as if it were completely natural to ask a man you barely know to name your unexpected children.

The baby closed a tight fist around one of Duncan's fingers. A firm grip. Duncan would never have his own son, as a Grey Warden he was reasonably sure of this, and he wasn't going to be able to do much for this one, either, but if there was one thing he could give him it was surely this, a name.

He choose Alistair; it was a family name.


	3. mud

Winter in Ferelden was bitter cold, so cold that he could hardly stand it, but in some ways, spring was worse. As the snow melted, the mountain passes cleared, and the darkspawn emerged from the Deep Roads as if from hibernation. Duncan was twenty-five years old, and he was fighting for his life.

A village south of West Hills swarmed with genlocks. Ankle deep in mud, Duncan struggled for purchase as he parried with his blades. An emissary cast a curse on him, and he slipped, and he felt the air pulling out of his chest and the warmth drawing out of his body as he lay dying on the ground.

His fellow Wardens, his brothers and sisters in blood, surged forward to defend him. He saw Riordan slip a knife into the emissary, and the curse dissipated, and the genlocks were defeated to a man. He rose. Beneath his armor his clothes were wet and heavy, his skin was raw and his body ached.

It was not over.

The darkspawn were in the village too long, and their disease had spread. The Wardens did what must be done. They stalked through the mud, before the silent horror of the villagers, and cut out the infection. Duncan found a boy, about six or seven, kneeling behind a storage shed, scratching at his arm. The boy was a ghoul.

There was a time when he would have run away. He ran away so many times his first year, but his calling always came with him, threaded through his veins. The duty that cannot be forsworn. He killed the boy.

When the town was safe again, Warden-Commander Thierry and the others headed back to Denerim; Duncan veered south, to Redcliffe.

It was clear from the start that while Isolde resented the child's presence, young Teagan never did. The youngest of three by many years, Teagan was thrilled that there was finally another baby in the family. When in Redcliffe, he assumed the role of jaunty young uncle with typical verve.

"I'm king of the mountain!" Teagan shouted, as he vaulted himself at Alistair and knocked him off the little hill, back into the mud. It was not at all fair: Teagan was an adult, in stature if not in state of mind, but the disparity did not seem to bother Alistair.

"Not for long!" the plucky six-year-old called back, as he picked himself up and jumped back into the fray.

"Do you think that's wise?" Duncan asked, gesturing at the boys. He stood on the steps of Redcliffe Castle, leaning against the railing. Eamon stood beside him, watching curiously. "Ignoring that Alistair is going to get himself killed, does it really become the Bann of Rainesfere to be seen wrestling with a bastard?"

"Do you want to try and stop them?" Eamon asked, with a laugh. "Because I surely don't, friend Warden. I've only just got this shirt clean again."

After a brief struggle, Teagan threw Alistair down again, and mud splattered the lawn. Alistair shook himself like a wet dog as he stood up, laughing. Duncan realized that he was smiling.

"No," he said, and he did not.


	4. grey

The Calling comes for everyone, and it came for Warden-Commander Thierry four years sooner than expected. Sometimes that happened: a Warden cannot count on thirty years. Duncan had been his second. He was twenty-nine years old, and he took command of an Order he never wanted to join in the first place.

He was given Thierry's shield, a heavy bulwark branded with the griffon of the Grey Wardens. Duncan set it down beside the set of silverite daggers Genevieve had given him, knives that belonged to the Warden he'd killed. These were not the weapons that he used, but they were the things he carried with him.

His first Joining was difficult, as he mouthed the words he learned from Genevieve, and forced poison down their throats. Two men died. Duncan began to think of his recruits as already dead, and it became a little easier.

He recruited many soldiers to his cause, discarded men to join him in the shadows.

There was Khevek, the dwarf exiled from Orzammar for killing a deshyr who seduced his wife. There was Gregor, the brawler he found drying out in a Gwaren prison after a bar fight. There was Richu, the qunari deep in debt from gambling who sought protection from a collector. His second was Riordan, a comrade from Orlais, another native from Highever, a fellow thief conscripted from the gallows.

And there was Tamarel. The Dalish archer joined because she was in love, and Duncan let her, because he was not. She leaned against him and her lips brushed against his neck. Her hair smelled of rose petals and rain. In the darkness, she still had nightmares; she was much younger than him, and she cried softly in her sleep.

He used her, used them all until there was nothing left, and it was for the greater good, but that didn't really matter. The course was predetermined, and Duncan disappeared in shades of grey.


	5. waves

The summer brought an especially turbulent season of storms, and the winds whipped the waters of the Waking Sea into a frenzy. Duncan was agitated, and he buried himself in his command. He was thirty-two years old before he sought another audience with the King.

"If it's not too late to give them, I offer my congratulations." Maric only half rose from his throne as Duncan strode into the room. "Would I have ever guessed that the lad who threw himself at dragons in the Deep Roads would live to be Commander of the Grey? Sweet sons of Andraste, no I would not."

Maric laughed, and Duncan found himself laughing as well, despite his apprehensions. Maric had that way with people. "Many thanks, your Majesty," he said, bowing low, "but it is other news that brings me here today."

The King nodded. "The pup." He stared off into the distance. "Yes, Eamon told me. My son is going to be a templar." Maric's eyes clouded as he looked back at Duncan. "Damn that man for marrying an Orlesian."

Duncan settled himself opposite the King. "Is there anything I can do?"

Maric sighed, and Duncan noticed then how tired he looked. A cobweb of wrinkles around his eyes, a lock of gray amidst the blond, all these signs he'd seen before, but this was the first time Maric had seemed old.

"No," said Maric. "The Chantry can have him. He'll be safe enough there, for now."

Resignation was not a tone the King wore often, and Duncan frowned. "Are you alright, your Majesty?" he asked. "You seem unlike yourself. I could call for a healer…?"

"You could call for a drink, maybe." He reached up and shrugged the crown off his head, rolling it end over end in his hands. "Duncan. My dear friend. Do you have any idea how heavy this thing is after twenty-five years?"

Duncan shook his head. "I could not imagine serving as Commander for so long," he said, knowing that he would not.

"I thought beating back the Orlesians was hard," Maric said. "I thought being a father was hard. Losing my wife, that was hard. Managing the Bannorn, the Circle Tower, the Chantry…" He sighed. "Now I've realized, it's just bloody life. Life is hard."

Duncan nodded. There wasn't anything to add to that.

"Sometimes I wish I was a Grey Warden," he said wistfully. "A sword in my hand, a shield on my back, with the good guys behind me and the bad guys in front of me. My life guaranteed to end in battle. That kind of clarity is a sort of freedom."

This had started just after Fiona. Maric was entranced with the Wardens, an obsession so infectious that it had spread to his son Cailan. Duncan said, "We are only fighters, just as you are."

"Was. I was a fighter." Maric closed his eyes. "Now I'm just an old man fiddling with politics and waiting for his legend to fade away. Some savior."

"Forgive me, your Majesty," Duncan said, and he smiled at his friend, "but I'm not dressed for a pity party."

Maric glowered back at him. "Don't you dare call me 'Your Majesty' when you're in the middle of calling me an ass." He laughed, and plopped the crown back on his head. It landed crookedly. "Especially when you're absolutely right."

When Duncan first met him, Maric still had some rough edges, a rebellious streak that must have served well in the war. Loghain had warned him not to go to the Deep Roads, and Maric had gone anyway. Fiona had told him to sod off, but he had kept after her. Those crags were gone, abraded by time, like a stone tumbled by the waves, smooth and featureless.

"I'm just tired," he said. "In the middle of planning a big trip, to the Anderfels." The King smiled. "Always wanted to see Weisshaupt."

"It's impressive." Duncan had only been there once, but he remembered it clearly, the chilling dignity of it. He wondered if the King hoped to see Fiona. She was still there, last he'd heard, her Calling still arrested and still a mystery. She never responded to any of Duncan's letters.

Maric settled deeply in his throne, his eyes half closed. Duncan spent little time in polite company, and he didn't know the right pleasantries for moments like this. "It won't be the same here without you," he said, and Maric went off to sea.


	6. saved

It was a warm day in the height of summer, and the amphitheatre crawled with templars. Duncan sat beside Knight-Commander Glavin, in attendance to recruit for the Order, but his eyes kept wandering to the boy sitting alone at the edge of the field. Alistair was nineteen years old, and he was clearly miserable.

Duncan had stayed away too long. For years he'd made a habit of checking on the boy, but after every trip to Redcliffe he'd continued on to Denerim, to report to the King. With Maric dead, the visits had stopped. It had not occurred to him until that day that he should have visited for no reason but his own.

As the tournament drew to a close, Glavin noticed his glances. "That's Alistair," he explained, sighing heavily. Glavin told him he was a troublemaker, a willful boy with a smart lip unseemly for a templar. He said something about the honor of the tournament, but Duncan was not listening.  
He closed his fingers over his palms. "I come to find the best, not the most polite. Let the boy compete."

Alistair was not the best. He was young, and green, and he was not bad but he was not good yet, either. It did not matter either way: Duncan had no intention of recruiting him. Better teased by templars than poisoned by darkspawn blood, he thought. When Duncan walked across the field to greet him, he only meant to offer congratulations.

"I know you," Alistair said as he approached. "Your Eamon's friend. You used to come by the castle all the time." His face broke into a broad smile. "Pony-tail guy."

Duncan stopped short. He never imagined Alistair had noticed him. "Strictly speaking," he said, "my name is actually Duncan."

"Of course," Alistair said. "Pony-tail guy would look very strange on your Warden-Commander stationary." He grinned at Duncan's surprise. "Yes, I know who you are. Everybody's talking about you. You've got the Grand Cleric in a tizzy, afraid you'll snatch up Kalvin or Talrew or another of her favorites." He chuckled to himself. "Always good to see her in a tizzy." He paused briefly to breathe. "I just didn't realize until I saw you up close that I knew you, you know, personally. Or hairstylistically, rather." And he frowned. "Is that why you wanted me to fight?"

Duncan laughed. "You always talk this much?"

"Yes," Alistair said. "It's a disease. Terminal, in fact. They say I have six months."

They stared at each other for a space. Duncan thought he favored his father almost completely, with his angular jaw and bright blond hair, and of course that Theirin nose. As hard as he looked, he could not find anything of Fiona in him.

"So you're recruiting Grey Wardens, then?"

"That's the idea."

Alistair tried to look casual. "Any chance you'd take me?"

The ghosts of Maric and Fiona shook stern fingers at him. Duncan frowned.

"Right, just checking," Alistair said, flashing a smile. "I was rubbish out there. Ahem, sorry. Of course you wouldn't want me."

"It's not that." Duncan cast his eyes down. "You did well, Alistair. A good showing for an initiate. I'm sure you'll make a fine templar one day."

"That's the thing, though, isn't it?" Alistair wiped the sweat off the back of his neck with his hand. "I really don't want to be a templar, and in case you hadn't noticed, the feeling is mutual." He bit his lip nervously. "Don't get me wrong, I love the Maker as much as the next guy, but I'd rather be, well, _anything_ else."

This wasn't the direction he'd expected the conversation to take, and Duncan found himself unprepared. He wasn't generally in the habit of dissuading recruits. "I'm afraid you might be misinformed," he said carefully. "A Grey Warden's life isn't glorious, like in the legends. It's short, and it's hard, and it's brutal. More brutal than anything you can imagine." He hesitated beneath Alistair's unwavering gaze. "And just in case you're wondering, there's no griffons."

Alistair shook his head. "Anything. A-ny-thing." He was asking the Wardens to save him, and Duncan saw then that he meant it.

Duncan remembered a bleak winter on the streets in Val Royeaux, when he was fourteen years old. He had been the best pickpocket in the city, except for Luc. With clever fingers, Luc could make a coinpurse fly right into his hand. He let Duncan share his fire. When the templars came they'd killed him, and his body had frozen in the street. Duncan closed his eyes.

Maric and Fiona were gone, and there was only Duncan, and this was all he has to offer. He took the boy.

Alistair was effervescent, he was ecstatic, and he thought that he was saved. He took Duncan's hand in his and thanked him. The Commander of the Grey exhaled. He knew that he had won a fan, and he was not sure that he'd earned it.


	7. changes

It was the evening of a Joining, and Duncan ended another life. As the recruit died before him, his value spent without a fight, the Warden-Commander promised that one day, he would join him. The taint claimed its casualty. Duncan was thirty-eight years old, and he was relieved it was not Alistair.

The boy shoveled another spoonful of potatoes into his mouth and asked, before he'd completely finished swallowing, "So what changes after the Joining? Besides a sudden abundance of well-armed siblings, I mean."

Duncan eyed the heaping pile of food in front of Alistair, his third that evening. It was always like this for Wardens, as though in their shortened lives they still had to cram in as much food as a regular person. "There's the appetite, of course."

Alistair wiped his mouth self-consciously. "Honestly, this is only a little bit more than I usually eat."

"Ah." Duncan smiled slightly. "I forget what it is like to be a teenage boy."

At this, Alistair sat back. "I'm not a teenager," he said indignantly. "Do I look like a teenager? I know my voice still cracks sometimes, but I thought my beard was really filling in." He licked his teeth and swallowed. "I'll be twenty-one in the fall. Of next year." He slumped in his chair. "Well, I'm _almost_ not a teenager."

Duncan laughed. Men spent half their lives pretending to be older, and the other half wishing they were younger. "My apologies," he said. "An old man's mistake."

Alistair smiled. "You're not so old," he said, his eyes shining with a hopeless hero worship that made Duncan shift uneasily in his chair. "So what else?"

"There's the nightmares. And the sensing of darkspawn, of course."

"Check and check." He grabbed a biscuit from his plate and began shredding it into flaky layers, buttering each piece separately before he ate it. "I still get the feeling there's something you're not telling me."

Of course there was. Duncan felt the poison in his blood, the executioner waiting in the wings. _I've killed you_ , he thought, turning away from him suddenly. _You're just a child and I've killed you._

"Duncan?"

He sighed. "You survived your Joining," he said, "but it catches up to you eventually. It's a death sentence. Eventually you'll be corrupted, your body giving ground to the taint until in the end you become indistinguishable from the darkspawn that you fight. In thirty years, give or take." He took a deep breath. "Most of us choose to die in the Deep Roads, before that happens. You'll know it's coming when the dreams get worse again. That time, the end, is known as the Calling."

Chewing slowly, Alistair digested this information. Duncan waited for the screaming to start, waited for Alistair to turn his anger against his Commander, as he had done with Genevieve. He shared the feeble words that she once said to him. "It's not how you die that's important," he said. "It's how you live."

Alistair scratched his head. "That's a pretty way of saying I'm going to die horribly, isn't it?"

"Yes. I'm sorry. I did warn you."

A warning was never enough, though, and Duncan knew this. Everyone is told they are going to die, but somehow it isn't real, not until it's burrowed in your blood, gnawing and inevitable.

After a little while, Alistair met his eyes and shrugged. "You did. I understand."

There was no screaming, no show of indignation, not even a protest at this cheap betrayal, just a child's trust in something like a father. In Alistair, he was younger, and stronger, and braver, and _better_. Duncan felt lighter. The boy thought he had saved him, but it was the other way around.

Eating again, Alistair asked, "Anything else?"

There were so many things that he would teach him. "You'll see," he said.


	8. noble

It was a perfect fall morning, and the apples were ripening in Amaranthine, and the fish were biting in the Waking Sea, and a bountiful harvest left the Bannorn fatted and content. It was the thirtieth year in the Dragon age, and Duncan knew an Archdemon was rising.

He could smell it with every breath and feel it in the marrow of his bones and see it whenever he closed his eyes. A Blight loomed, but Duncan was not afraid; he was liberated. This was his calling, and he knew then what it meant, and he embraced it.

There was no criminal too nefarious to conscript, no knight too cherished to spare him from the risk. Ferelden needed more Wardens. Duncan's efforts led him to the Alienage in Denerim, and he greeted the weathered hahren pleasantly. "Anyone you'd like to tell me about, Valendrian?"

"Last year I would have said Kallian, friend Warden," the elder said. "Maker knows she's feisty enough, but miracle of miracles, her father has found some poor sap to be her husband." He pointed at a cluster of young elves, one of them in a wedding dress. "Look."

Duncan watched the bride, her mouse-brown hair tied up in a thick knot, as she squirmed inside her embroidered gown. Kallian was a scrapper, and the seams strained around her back. Her hair reminded him of Fiona.

She saw him watching and advanced, followed by a reedy boy in borrowed finery, a brother or a cousin. Duncan could see exactly who they were as children. Kallian, just a little older, was always taller. In sorting games she always chose first; in hide and seek, she always found him.

Up close, Kallian's eyes shone as green as malachite. He chided himself for thinking of Fiona. Apart from a pair of pointed ears, this elf looked nothing like her.

"Good day," Duncan said. "I understand congratulations are in order, for your impending wedding."

Kallian gave a jerky nod. "Let's talk about your impending beating."

Duncan smiled, in spite of himself. No, nothing like Fiona. This one was too young to know the world was full of fights, and that she should choose her battles carefully. "Are you threatening me?"

The boy made apologies for her, as he had his entire life, but Kallian offered none of her own. In any case, they weren't necessary; Duncan was a little bit in love. When they left, Valendrian turned to him and said, "Of course you recognize the eyes."

"I do," he agreed. "She's the spitting image of Adaia."

"And just as reckless." Valendrian looked at him sharply. "You can't have her. She's getting married."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Duncan promised, but of course he did.

She was brave, brash and unpolished, but he could fix that. And she was pretty. This set of recruits would be Alistair's, just as he had been Fiona's, and it wouldn't hurt to throw a pretty girl his way. The boy seemed to need some encouragement in that area.

Duncan laughed at himself. He was becoming sentimental.

Her wedding did not happen. The local arl's son kidnapped Kallian and four others in an obscene fit of _droit de seigneur_. Valendrian turned to him imploringly, but the noble had brought a cadre of armed guards, and there was the Blight to consider. Duncan was old enough to know he had to choose his battles heartlessly. When the grooms charged after them, half-armed, he stayed his blades and waited.

Kallian led them home, less one girl and her betrothed. She was bloodied and faint, and the elf with the flame-red hair had the same haunted look that Duncan once saw in Fiona. She flinched when she noticed his attention, and he averted his eyes.

In a space of hours Kallian had grown older. Her green eyes dulled, her fire dimmed, as she learned a little more about the world. When the guards came, Kallian accepted her fate, keeping all the consequences to herself as she waited bravely for the executioner. Duncan decided that might as well be him.

"Captain," he said. "A word, if you please."


	9. light

It was a windy day in Ostagar, and Duncan was uneasy. If only the Blight had come when his black hair was not frosted silver at the temples, when he still had some taste for glory. When Maric was still alive to help him. He was thirty-eight years old, and he had too many children to protect.

The plan was sound and simple enough. He would rather have waited for reinforcements from Redcliffe, or preferably Orlais, but the Hero of River Dane was beside him, and Duncan trusted him as Maric did. Alistair and Kallian would light the beacon, and Loghain would come, and they would win.

But the beacon did not light, and Loghain did not come. The Grey Wardens of Ferelden were overrun, the horde claimed victory, and all the work of Duncan's life was ground so thoroughly to nothing that it was as if he'd died on the gallows in Val Royeaux.

He watched the tower but the beacon did not light, and he watched Cailan fight an ogre but he did not win, and he thought, _Maric, my friend, I'm sorry, you trusted me with both your sons, and I failed you, twice over._

There was only this. Duncan raised his sword and spent the last shreds of his life in slaying Cailan's ogre. With his last breath he stabbed it, desperately, with no more grace than his first encounter with a darkspawn, and when it fell, finally, he fell with it, his legs broken, his body beaten, the battle lost.

Delirious, his tainted blood running out across the ground, he thought he heard his friend say _No_. Before a hurlock took him, the executioner's axe come twenty years late, he lifted his head and saw the beacon light.


End file.
